APPEAL TO PRESIDENT BORIS TADIĆ AND THE SERBIAN PARLIAMENT: DO NOT GAMBLE WITH YOUR COUNTRY’S FUTURE! NO TO THE SREBRENICA RESOLUTION.

Dear Mr. President and honorable deputies,

As concerned American and European intellectuals and citizens, we call on you to seriously reconsider the plan to adopt a parliamentary resolution that would treat the Srebrenica massacre of July 1995 as a paradigmatic event of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in doing so to use language that could be interpreted as Serbia’s acceptance of responsibility for “genocide.”

The execution of Moslem prisoners in July of 1995, after Bosnian Serb forces took over Srebrenica, was a war crime, but it is by no means a paradigmatic event. The informed public in Western countries knows that, at that time, forces attributed to the Republic of Srpska executed in three days approximately as many Moslems as Moslem forces, raiding surrounding Serbian villages out of Srebrenica, had murdered during the preceding three years. There is nothing to set one crime apart from the other, except that its commission was more condensed in time. In a vicious civil war, in which all sides commit crimes, all innocent victims are entitled to compassion but the victims of one ethnic group should have no special moral claim to unique recognition. Putting the suffering of one group on a pedestal necessarily derogates from the right of the other group – in this case Serbian non-combatants in the devastated villages surrounding the enclave of Srebrenica – to an equal measure of sympathy.

More importantly, what really happened in Srebrenica in July of 1995 is an issue that is still not settled, or why it occurred, and who was behind it. The accepted version of events, shaped mainly by war propaganda and hyperbolic media reports, is becoming increasingly obsolete because it is being vigorously questioned and reassessed by critical thinkers in the Western world. Much reliable information on these events is still unavailable and needs to be researched, but without it responsible conclusions on the nature and scope of the Srebrenica massacre cannot be drawn. Both the event’s alleged scope and its legal description as “genocide” are intensely in dispute. It would therefore be very unwise for Serbia and its parliament to formally commit themselves to a version of events that is thin on evidence but long on moral and political implications that are extremely detrimental to Serbia and its people.

We are also troubled by the prospect of Serbia and its parliament might accept the thesis that the massacre in Srebrenica, regrettable as it may be, amounts to “genocide.” That would unpardonably diminish genuine genocide as a phenomenon of the 20th century, of which the Holocaust of the Jewish people and the mass extermination campaigns against Armenians, Pontus Greeks, Assyrians, Kurds, and the Roma are some outstanding examples.

We are concerned that the politicisation of human suffering and the frivolous usage of the grave legal category of genocide greatly cheapens these important concepts and constitutes an undeserved insult to innocent victims of political violence everywhere in the world.

Not only would Serbia, by an act of its own parliament, put itself in the same league with Nazi Germany if such a resolution were passed. It would also sanctify at Serbia's extreme disadvantage a propaganda narrative whose key components are factually unsupported. It would implicitly endorse the view that the Republic of Srpska was built on genocide and thus endanger its further existence and play into the hands of those pressuring for the centralisation of Bosnia. Finally, it would expose Serbian taxpayers to the possibility of a multi billion euro suit for damages which they are ill equipped at the present moment to pay [and have no obligation to do so, for that matter].

For all these reasons, we appeal to you to refrain from passing the projected Srebrenica resolution. If you feel it your duty to perform an act of public compassion toward the victims of the Bosnian war, we recommend as the only proper method that you pass a single resolution, written in ethnically neutral language, encompassing all of the victims and honoring them equally.

Signed:

Prof. Edward Herman, academic, United States

Jurgen Elsaesser, author and journalist, Germany

Germinal Civikov, author and journalist, the Netherlands

Alexander Dorin, author, Switzerland

Prof. Alexander Mezyaev, Russian Federation

Eckart Spoo, journalist and publicist, Germany

Diana Johnstone, political analyst and writer, United States and France

Elena Borisova, professor at the Moscow City Pedagogical University, Russia

Stefan Zeuge, Student, Berlin, Germany

Jean Toschi Marazzani Visconti, journalist and writer, Italy

Yasik Antonov [???? ???????], Moscow, Russia

Ivan Priima, writer, Russia

Dragana Drakulic-Priima, university professor, Russia

Aleksandr Orlov,St. Petersburg, Russia

Dr. med Donka Lange, Farstar medical GmbH, Germany

Baramzina Nadezhda Anatolevna, Saint-Petersburg, Russia

Vladislav Kuprin, internal auditor, Moscow, Russia

Andey Torshin, Russia

Igor Leonov, Russia

Chazov Vadim, Perm, Russia

Hermann Cebulla, Gelsenkirchen/Buer, Germany

Nina Nechaeva, journalist, Lobno, Russia

Rule von Bismarck, Hamburg, Germany

Andrei Tikhomirov, historian, Russia

Additional remarks suggested by Professor Edward Herman: “(1) When is the EU going to insist on an apology to Serbs from Croatia and the United States and UN for Operations Flash and Storm, which involved the greatest ethnic cleansing operations in the Balkan wars, and ones where, in contrast with others, the victims have never been able to return?; (2) when will the EU and NATO apologize to the Kosovo Serbs for the greatest "proportionate" ethnic cleansing of the Yugoslav wars carried out under NATO auspices after June 10, 1999? (and to the Roma for their ethnic victimization in the same period?); (3) when will the EU and United States apologize for introducing Al Qaeda into Bosnia and Europe to fight (and behead) Serbs, as described in detail in "Unholy Terror: Bosnia, Al Qaida, and the Rise of Global Jihad," by John R. Schindler, Professor at the U.S. National War College and former National Security Council specialist in Bosnia?”

“It is necessary to include a demand for an admission by all Nato countries that they committed war crimes against the people of Serbia in the massive aerialbombardment of the spring of 1999 in which all rules of war were brokenand that the final agreement to cease that bombardment by allowing Natoforces to occupy Kosovo was forced on the Serbian government under threatof the mass murder of the the people of Belgrade by American B52's whichthreat was made to president Milosevic and others by Mssrs. Athisaari andChernomyrdin as agents of the USA; a threat in which they promised to kill500,000 people in Belgrade and flatten the city unless the terms theypresented were accepted. Srebrinica, even if the Nato propaganda were true(which I do not accept) pales in comparison against such terror.”

Whatever the fate of the Srebrenica "safe area" population in July 1995, this most assuredly was not a case of genocide, notwithstanding a series of political judgments handed down by the ICTY, and later reiterated by the ICJ. The European Parliament's passage by a near-unanimous vote of a resolution proclaiming July 11 a Day of Commemoration of the Srebrenica Genocide only adds to the debasement of this important concept, and to the trivialization of real genocides past, present, and future.

“I am not happy with the part of the appeal that condemns the act of the forces of Republika Srpska as „war crime“ and speaks about an equal death toll on the sides of the Muslims and Serbs around Srebrenica. I fully support the appeal's statement that ‘what really happened in Srebrenica in July of 1995 is an issue that is still not settled... why it occurred, or who was behind it.’ This is, in my view, the most correct way to address the issue. And if I have to admit that I do not know what happened, what is the purpose of admitting to some „war crime“? Is there any reliable information about ‘Srebrenica’ to this date? Information other than from Western media, Western politicians and their so-called NGO’s?”

Additional remarks suggested by Vladislav Kuprin, Russia:

Dear Mr. President and honorable Deputies, I ask you not to adopt a parliamentary resolution that would treat the Srebrenica massacre of July 1995 in such language that could be interpreted as Serbia’s acceptance of responsibility for “genocide”.All people of good will know that the description of those hard events as “genocide executed in Srebrenica by Serbs in relation to Moslems ” is a lie that is propagated by Moslems’ extreme nationalists and fanatics all over the world.I ask you to support the truth, not lie for Serbia’s sake.

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